Garden June 7b

Tobasco

Tobasco overwinters well. Before first frost, I prune the plants back by 50%, dig them up, split them (one plant becomes 2) and then pot them up and bring them inside, where they spend the winter on a south facing windowsill. I plant them back out after last frost (mid April in 7b).

Overwintered potatoes #1

This was my first year experimenting with overwintered potatoes; it worked in this zone -- we had average lows of 20F in January, with 10F at the extreme.
To do this, dig a trench about 8-12" deep. Fill the bottom with 6" of freshly collected leaves....

Overwintered potatoes #2

...add seed potatoes, top with another 6" of leaves, and then top with the soil that you removed from the trench. The source that I picked this up from says that the slowly composting leaves create heat which keeps the potatoes at a warm enough temperature that they survive.
These guys all popped up in late April.

Egyptian Walking Onion

First year growing walking onions, which are perennial. They create bulbs on the stalks, which you can twist off and use (you can also eat stalks as a green onion). If you leave them, the stalks droop to the ground, the bulbs take root, and a new plant grows...so the patch will spread if you let it.

Parsnip gone to seed

I left one parsnip in the ground to let it go to seed. It got to about 6' tall before the heavy rains pushed it to one side. It's still flowering like gangbusters -- I'd estimate that there are thousands of seeds on it. Will be trading some on r/seedswap.

Tomato cage w/ twine

This is a modified Florida Weave. I'm training the tomato stalks horizontally along the twine, and adding more storeys as they grow. All of my tomatoes were self-seeding volunteers this year (in different areas from where the original plants were.)

Hardy bananas

These bananas are hardy to zone 7. They should get to around 10 feet by the end of the year; over winter they die back to the ground. I don't think these ones will fruit, although there are some hardy bananas that do.

Excellent weed

I left this weed in the ground over winter. I have been told the name, but I forget it; it has now shot up to over 6' tall, with a central spike covered in yellow flowers. The pollinators are big fans!